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A new poem by John Deming

 

Half-Size Dishwasher Routine Voice

 

“Like all routines, however mindless, this

is one I backed into. But it’s–

don’t fear: don’t wake up half-drunk,

hating yourself: you’re tremendous,

one of the best–and it’s

you there, only you attempting

hard memory at what muscle memory.

Remember things, not emotions.

There are reasons to stay one place a long time.”

 

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John Deming’s new chapbook 8 Poems was just published by Eye For an Iris Press, and his four-song Tugboat EP, which features members of P-Funk, was released this summer by BozFonk Music. Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, FENCE, Verse Daily, Tarpaulin Sky, POOL and elsewhere.  He is Editor-in-Chief of Coldfront Magazine, lives in New York City, and teaches at Baruch College and LIM College.

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Still Reading

 

We are still happily reading the many excellent manuscripts submitted for our inaugural Editors’ Prize book contest in May. We will notify the winner personally and announce results here on this page by early fall.

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A poem by Oni Buchanan

The Occupation

 

You see, it really is a lot of work
because there is a lot of mud, you see,

especially when it rains so much
like it has and makes mud

upon mud, mud all the way
down, and then it really becomes

quite the occupation to
move all that mud

from one side to the other,
to push all that mud back and forth, to sort

one mud from another mud.
I was an industrious pig.

In my pen I pushed a ball of mud
from one end to the other—

There is so much mud to distribute
and so much works against my

perfect placement of mud,
against all my efforts.  It rains and

my piles of mud are destroyed, are rendered
sloppy, festering pools

where loathsome mosquitoes breed.  At least
I can wallow, but to make progress,

to make any progress at all,
one needs a certain

substance to the mud, a certain texture, a
structural integrity

to the mud to build on it,
to build mud upon mud—

I suppose I am all design, all strategy and design.
All lofty, ephemeral dreaming,

enchantment and charm, unlikeliness—
The sun as a kiln could work for me

if the sun worked at all.
There is no moderation on this earth.

Or maybe that’s just it.
Maybe there is only moderation.

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Oni Buchanan is the author of Spring, selected by Mark Doty for the 2007 National Poetry Series, and published by the University of Illinois Press in September 2008. Her first poetry book, What Animal, was published in 2003 by the University of Georgia Press. She is also a concert pianist, has released three solo piano CDs, and actively performs across the U.S. and abroad. She lives in Boston with her husband, the poet Jon Woodward.

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Thanks, Hafez by Diana Arterian

after Ted Berrigan

I made the trip with the help
of the bird of Solomon.
Taste some healing water – kiss nothing
except the sweetheart’s lip
and the cup of wine.
Now I am biting my own lip,
Solomon’s magnificence, his horse of wind,
his grasp of bird language – at least at this moment.
The bells sound, their tongues
continue to strike. Nothing is sweeter.
I find I am crying in this foreign place
lifted by the wings and feathers of glory.
The grieving chest finds honey –
abandon the scene in motion, sit in the Garden.

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Diana Arterian recently earned her MFA in poetry at the California Institute of the Arts, where she was a Beutner Fellow. In the fall she will begin her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing as a Merit Fellow at USC. She is a founding member of Gold Line Press, a chapbook publisher, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in River Styx, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Iron Horse Literary Review. She lives in Los Angeles.